The loft style dates back to the 40s of the last century. The birthplace of this style trend is the USA. It was during this period that land in the central part of large cities became very expensive. This forced owners of industrial production to move their enterprises outside the city. Huge areas of warehouses and workshops were cleared. Such premises combined relatively low rent with good functional characteristics. Over time, they were chosen as workshops, exhibition spaces and housing by people of creative professions - artists, designers, sculptors, architects. Then came the fashion for loft housing, it became fashionable, exclusive and elite. The interior of cafes in the loft style (“attic”) and restaurants designed as creative workshops have become very popular.
About the style - main features and characteristics
The main concept of the style is the destruction of stereotypes, as much space and air as possible, a minimum number of partitions. Dividing a room into zones is done by arranging pieces of furniture, different shades, and finishing materials. If partitions exist, they are symbolic, made of transparent and translucent material. The presence of industrial motifs in the interior is mandatory - stairs, fittings, brickwork, deliberately rough, “sloppy” plaster, an uncovered ventilation system. These rough elements are somehow incomprehensibly combined with modern, trendy and very expensive furniture, mirrors, and lighting fixtures. The use of non-standard accessories is encouraged.
The room must be large and tall, although it is possible to arrange a loft on limited square meters. The windows are large and bright. The advantage of the style is that it involves maximum use of artificial lighting. If there are several small windows in the room, it is advisable to combine them into one large structure. The use of plastic double-glazed windows is acceptable, but wooden or metal frames with a large number of segments will look much more organic. Curtains are unlikely to fit into an industrial interior. It is better to replace them with curtains made of material that transmits light, or regular blinds. It is advisable to use pendant lamps. High ceilings allow you to divide the space vertically into several levels connected by metal stairs.
The main characteristics of a loft are freedom, simplicity, and what is exposed is not luxury, but unpretentiousness. This is the antithesis of pomposity, chic and excessive luxury.
This is a fresh and bold style, the development of projects opens up possibilities that are not available for other types of design. It turns out that there is a kind of beauty in rough-hewn furniture, unplastered walls and exposed utilities. Here is a description of the main interior elements.
Loft style
One of the most current styles that will fit perfectly into the interior of both a small coffee shop and an expensive restaurant is the industrial loft borrowed from the Americans.
Loft is a rather unusual phenomenon in design. It differs significantly from the styles familiar to the Russian eye.
A dark color design will be a winning option.
Loft style goes well with wood
Its appearance is due to the fact that in the 20th century America was gripped by a housing shortage. At the same time, throughout the country many premises of former factories and factories have been preserved, sprouting like mushrooms after rain as a result of the industrial revolution. Resourceful industrialists began to rent out these buildings, only slightly converting their interior into a habitable form.
In those days, such a home was a necessary necessity, but now a loft is a favorite of fashion designers and the creative elite. Of course, these are no longer just bare brick walls and protruding pipes. The loft style has acquired modern features and is played with many design techniques, emphasizing the good taste and originality of the owner.
Light can be accentuated only on tables and the bar counter
Walls can be equipped with additional lighting
The sofa in the living room will look great
Style color scheme
The color schemes emphasize the urban elements of the interior and the urban palette. This is the dominance of brick, gray, blue, metal. One of the walls of a cafe or restaurant can be made an accent wall using other finishing materials. This can be mosaic tiles or ordinary unplastered concrete. One of the favorite design solutions for a cozy loft-style cafe is the use of natural brickwork, as if laid with your own hands, or its realistic imitation.
Attention to windows
Loft-style cafes have large windows. This allows natural light to enter the room.
Blinds: emphasizing man-made features
For shading from the bright sun, the best option is to use blinds. At the same time, the interior of the bar in the loft style will receive the necessary comfort and coziness, which will make your stay in the cafe the most pleasant and inviting. Regardless of the size of the windows, you can choose the most suitable blind system.
The best option for an industrial style is horizontal blinds, consisting of a system of slats interconnected. Such models make it possible to adjust the degree of shading, allowing you to fix the height of the elevation at any level.
Advice! The technological direction of the design will be supported by blinds made of aluminum or wood, less often plastic.
Loft-style restaurants confirm how effectively blinds can transform an entire room. Sometimes vertical or roller systems for organizing window decoration are chosen. But they are less in demand, since the presence of fabric in industrial design is limited.
Roller blinds: the comfort of your favorite cafe
Laconic and simple roller blinds in discreet monochromatic colors are well suited for style trends that emphasize laconicism. This is a suitable option for a loft-style restaurant, bar or cafe. Roller blinds provide good sun protection with good quality material and the ability to choose the appropriate model.
Rafblinds
External blinds are a fairly common choice for the interior of a loft-style cafe, as in the photo. The blinds can be remote controlled or controlled from special units (mechanical control). They allow you to keep the room warm in winter and shade it from the sun in summer.
Among the advantages of such an organization of window openings is high structural strength and resistance to any weather vicissitudes. Typically, rugged blinds are made from metal slats.
Awnings for cafes
A system of canopies on the outside of the building allows you to shade not only the inside of the cafe, but also organize cozy seating areas outside. An increase in seating will allow us to serve more people in the warm season, giving everyone the opportunity to choose a place to relax - on the street or inside the building.
Advantages of organizing sheds:
- Wind resistance.
- Waterproof.
- Possibility to choose the texture of the material.
- Possibility of selecting control - automatically and manually.
Awnings are resistant to temperature changes and have high strength. Designs are presented in a wide range.
If the awnings are left in the winter, they protect the space well from snow and wind, as well as from rain falling on the windows. Depending on their purpose, awnings differ from each other. Made to order, they take into account all the nuances of the building’s location and the architecture of the building.
Finishing
The loft style, despite its outward appearance, is considered luxurious and bourgeois. In fact, if you approach the matter intelligently and competently, you can get an inexpensive, attractive interior of the establishment that fully complies with the style canons.
Walls
So, bare concrete or natural brick accent wall is a classic of the genre. However, not everyone likes such extreme sports. You can do it differently: decorate the walls with snow-white or ivory-colored water-based paint. Using one of the walls as an accent wall allows you to simultaneously solve two opposing problems: to emphasize the unity of the room and to zone the space. By the way, it is not at all necessary to use natural masonry or roughly plastered concrete. It is possible to use wallpaper with an imitation of this finish.
Floor
The best option is to make the floor plank or use laminate. Unpainted boards with a natural wood texture, coated with clear varnish, look beautiful. Ceramic tiles, natural or artificial stone are used somewhat less frequently as flooring. Concrete fits well into the style concept, but cleaning the rough surface from dirt will be problematic. Therefore, it is better to abandon such an idea. But self-leveling flooring will come in handy. Skirting boards are used in wood or painted to look like wood.
Ceiling
The simplest option to make the room even brighter and more voluminous is to paint the ceiling white. This is especially true for rooms with low ceilings. Rough wooden partition structures or pipes mounted on the ceiling look good. The “attic” atmosphere is conveyed more strongly. Between the trusses you can hang lamps on chains. There is an even more radical option: leave the ceiling unfinished at all.
Furniture
Tables in a cafe or bar can be used in different ways: emphatically elegant or, conversely, rough, with a touch of brutality and uncouthness. But, in any case, they must be functional, versatile, comfortable and practical.
In the coffee, dining area and at the bar counter, types of furniture such as sofas, armchairs, ottomans and chairs (regular or bar) are used. The design is very different. This makes it possible to create a non-standard, unique and very attractive room. Sturdy screw stools, rough-hewn benches, homely armchairs and bar stools on elegant metal legs go well together. These disparate items are united by the fact that they allow you to create maximum comfort for visitors. This is what makes loft cafes so attractive.
Shelves and racks in the interior are distinguished by strict geometry and rough lines, maximum use of natural materials, lack of decor and natural colors. The metal profile base and solid wood surfaces combine to create the impression of strength and reliability. It is not at all necessary to use old boards to make furniture. Artificial aging helps achieve the desired effect. All items placed on the shelves seem to be on display. Maximum openness is present here too.
Restaurant in oriental style
The design of an oriental restaurant is unthinkable without large soft carpets - in the East they have long been used to decorate both floors and walls.
Low carved furniture and voluminous satin pillows with gold tassels will give guests a feeling of comfort. Choose large and soft sofas and armchairs - in the interior of an oriental restaurant, chairs will definitely be superfluous.
You can use translucent curtains to divide the space into zones. For the windows, choose luxurious curtains made of heavy fabric - it is advisable that the color in the room be a little muted.
Decorative elements can include jewelry made of copper and ceramics, souvenir hookahs, and painted plates on stands. Let Arabic musical motifs sound in the establishment.
Lighting
The loft room is very bright. Lighting fixtures are something you shouldn’t skimp on. The choice of lamp depends entirely on the taste preferences of the cafe owner. This could be a fancy pendant chandelier (fortunately, the height of the room allows it), spot lights with changing lighting direction, or street lamps. You can create additional lighting using table lamps with fabric lampshades decorated with forging. Devices that imitate vintage and antiquity look great next to completely modern spotlights and LED strips. Electrical wiring is fixed to the walls and ceiling. This gives the impression of a temporary structure. A cluster of different light bulbs to highlight a specific area is welcome. Natural light is provided by large windows. To decorate them, blinds or symbolic transparent curtains are quite enough. You can leave them completely open.
Architectural details
A characteristic feature of a loft-style coffee shop is its industrial details. Absolutely everything reminds of the “proletarian origin” of the room: pipes, communications, stairs, perhaps some devices characteristic of industrial production. A special architectural detail is the windows: large, well-transmitting light, devoid of the usual classic curtains. At the same time, elements of an abandoned workshop coexist very well with modern technology, and the old with the trendy.
About the bar counter
The bar counter is one of the characteristic elements of the interior, made in the loft style. This is a durable design, designed for long-term use and able to cope with significant loads. Most often, the rack has an all-metal base, providing functionality, durability and stability. A wooden tabletop goes well with a metal frame. The magnificent tandem of wood and metal symbolizes the combination of modern and classic elements inherent in the loft style.
Accessories and decor
The accessories in the loft are unusual, as are all the interior elements. This is not to say that they are not given attention. There is hardly a place for a picture with cats or figurines. Urban design is somehow not conducive to this. All decorative elements look as if they were hastily made from scrap materials. These can be framed newspaper or magazine clippings, photographs, poster pictures with unusual color schemes, or just frames without paintings. Road signs or graffiti paintings are also used as decoration. An excellent decorative option is a drawing made on the wall with charcoal. Modern refrigerators, stereo systems and even washing machines look like non-standard, but very interesting accessories for such a room. Elements of urban culture such as bicycles can be used as accessories for decorating a room. A useful element of an interior with two levels is a rough wooden or metal staircase, “like in a factory.”
Industrial chic
For most of the walls, the designers retained the brickwork, slightly refining it. This industrial chic, combined with soft quilted sofas and flowing curtains, looks stylish and removes the excessive sugary beauty - let it be better in desserts with whipped cream.
In the photo: Soft quilted sofas and curtains with tiebacks, creating a romantic atmosphere - only the wall decoration preserves memories of the past of this loft
Unusual posters with models create a slightly playful mood, as does the bas-relief with a languid female figure chosen for the interior of a men’s bathroom. While combing your hair in front of a large mirror, you can dream about female attention and a pleasant outcome of the evening.
In the photo: Walls and floors decorated with the same smooth gray tiles, lamps similar to street lamps, bas-relief tell us that this interior is intended for real machos
Designer recommendations for decorating a loft in a cafe
There can be different ways to design a loft room for a cafe, pub or coffee shop. However, there is also a list of general program recommendations from design specialists that will undoubtedly be useful to you.
- The layout of the room is open, with zones highlighted using light, color or texture contrasts.
- "Cold" walls. It is desirable that it be concrete or brickwork. If you plaster concrete, the plaster should be rough. It is possible to use panels with imitation of natural materials. Glass interior elements are welcome.
- We must not forget that in the loft style, ventilation, cables, pipes are necessary interior attributes. Therefore, they must be in plain sight.
- The furniture is deliberately massive and rough, with wooden and metal elements. It can be dark or light. Sometimes modern furniture is quite successfully used when decorating a loft cafe. The archaic and the trendy exist side by side quite peacefully and organically. In addition to the usual sofas and armchairs, shelves or racks for placing books and accessories fit into the loft interior.
- The use of beautiful plants when arranging the interior somewhat softens the masculinity and brutality of the loft. The use of upholstery made from high-quality, expensive textiles makes the room more comfortable.
- A good solution for a loft cafe is to install a real fireplace in the room. The establishment will be not just cozy, but also atmospheric.
- The floors in the loft are mainly concrete and wood. It is allowed to use laminate and ceramic tiles, stylized as natural stone.
How to make room zoning
Projects designed for loft cafes require separation of one zone from another. In an open-plan room without partitions, designers can choose from several approaches, each of which will fit into the industrial style.
Play of colors and choice of texture
When implementing a bar and restaurant design project, various functional areas can be highlighted using color and texture techniques. To do this, several materials are selected that can interact in contrast.
For example, the bar area can be made more expressive using red brick, while the walls of the main hall are made of concrete.
Lighting as a zoning tool
In addition to color and texture separation, the boundaries of different cafe zones can be distinguished with the help of properly selected lighting. Sometimes in this case it is possible to use LED strips instead of standard lamps, which helps to clearly delineate areas with excellent functions. In an industrial space, lamp shades can vary in shape and size, which will only add visual variety to the project.
Furniture as an element of zoning a bar in a loft style
Thoughtful arrangement of various types of furniture in groups is another possible tool for zoning a loft-style bar. It creates secluded and calm places in the space for visitors to relax.
Industrialism for a bar, cafe and restaurant - avoiding sharp corners
When designing a restaurant in a loft style, you should first of all take into account the general orientation of the establishment. When choosing interior design elements, a major role is played by the initial data of the object, primarily architectural and technical, its location in the city, and the project budget. The audience that the design is aimed at is an essential factor.
